This past week I’ve decided to upgrade the Yaesu FT-891 to something a little more modern so I pulled the trigger on purchasing the Yaesu FT-710.

There where a number of reasons for this. When I bought the FT-891 a few months ago I wanted something small to sit in the corner of the desk mainly for working FT8 and the occasional higher powered SSB voice call when the IC-705 working at 10watts just wouldn’t cut it. The FT-891 did that just perfectly but I found the display basic display a little too retro and I missed being able to use a band scope and waterfall display.

I looked at several rigs as a replacement and cut it down to 2. The Icom IC-7300 or the Yaesu FT-710. Both are great radios and being Icom or Yaesu they are both excellent build quality so it really came down to functionality and again both radios did pretty much the same. But what finally clinched it for me was that the Yaesu came with an external monitor port and a USB port for a mouse on the back and Icom only put them on their much higher end expensive radios and that and that alone is what made me go for the FT-710.